Yeah everyone's got their opinions on this. For whatever reason the Telemark TASM assembler is my favorite. Simple. But yeah it's DOS + linux basically abandonware. But it's table driven IIRC and supports our undocumented instructions and doesn't really change.
But then people want preprocessors and relocating linkers and stuff. asxxxx https://shop-pdp.net/ashtml/ gives you that stuff. But is it used by other compilers? What's the adoption? One thing I don't happen to like is Z80 syntax. It's a mapping to an assembly language I never used to a processor that is a separate branch of the 8080 that the 8085 is not a part of. Maybe it's all moot? Like, use what you like and a competent AI setup can save us from tool incompatibility. "Rewrite all this code for my tools and build system" *"**The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from."* -- John. On Tue, Oct 20, 2026 at 1:58 PM Brian K. White <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm just glad you're up & running under your own power. What's the point > of source if you can't use it? > > I now feel like apologizing for focussing around z88dk. I chose to use > z88dk because it seemed the most current and actively maintained 8085 > assembler. > It seemed like something that would be the easiest for a user to install > in the future since it had a current web site that you can google and > download binaries for linux, mac, and windows, not some old win32 binary > that doesn't even run on current windows any more without rigging up some > special supporting environment, etc, or worse an old dos app that needs > dosbox to even run at all including on windows, hasn't been updated in > forever and never will be since no one has the source for it... > I guess that much IS true at least, that anyone on any of the major OS's > can download current binaries for z88dk. > > But it's such a large suite with all kinds of stuff because it's not just > an assembler but also a c compiler and a boatload of templates and > frameworks and boilerplate for targetting a bunch of different old > machines, with a lot of machine/platform specific stuff not just their cpus. > > An assembler is actually a relatively simple tool and doesn't need to be > large. It can be a single small file that's much simpler to copy, install, > run, port to all OS's, etc. > > A while back HackerB9 tried to convince me to make some changes to RAMDSK > source so it would build with asmx. I wasn't very interested at the time > because I was still too busy just trying to figure out RAMDSK itself to > think too much about getting the source to be compatible with some other > assembler. I tried a little but mostly just said "well that assembler sux > anyway..." and didn't think about it any more. > > https://github.com/bkw777/NODE_DATAPAC/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aclosed > https://github.com/bkw777/NODE_DATAPAC/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen > > But I think I'm not saying that any more :) > Merely assembling should be simpler to go from zero to running. > > -- > bkw > > On 10/19/26 15:41, Georg Käter wrote: > > Now it works. I´ve to apologize my stupidness. As always, just have to > read and follow the instructions. > > > > Thanks again for your help > > > > Regards > Georg > > >
